Pottery distinct from the Glades tradition developed in the region around AD 500, marking the beginning of the Caloosahatchee culture. The team conducted a geophysical survey of both large mounds at the site, known as Mounds 1 and 2, and then they partially excavated the areas where ground-penetrating radar had indicated the locations of features and structures. It is likely there are descendants of the Calusa living among the Native American people of Florida and in Cuba today., In terms of Mound Key, much more can be learned about the Spanish fort and mission, the relations between the Calusa and the Spaniards and the earlier, pre-contact occupations of the island, Marquardt said. In 1521 Ponce de Len returned to southwest Florida to plant a colony, but the Calusa drove the Spanish out, mortally wounding Ponce de Len. The story of the Calusa during the Spanish occupation of La Florida is a complicated one, said Thompson. Although we cannot be sure what values the masks and animal figureheads held for the Calusa, they may have been markers of clan affiliation, and the animals represented most likely played important roles in Calusa mythology and religion. The Calusa Indians, who live in southwest Florida, are weakened by epidemics. Native American names In addition, elaborate rituals with synchronized singing and processions of masked priests were also carried out on that occasion. Openings in the berms likely allowed the Calusa to drive fish into the enclosures for short-term storage, and then they closed those openings with nets and wooden gates. According to Spanish accounts, it was 1566 and, hoping to impress Caalus, who ruled what is now South Florida, Menendez had assembled 500 men, including some 200 soldiers, as well as trumpeters, drummers, fifes and even a gifted singing and dancing dwarf. The Spanish documented four cases of known succession to the position of paramount chief, recording most names in Spanish form. Water World. What was the calusa Indians religion? Calusa means "fierce people," and they were described as a fierce, war-like people. 2013-09-27 21:18:35. An anonymous account mentions an autumn ceremony in which dancers wore animal masks (Coggin and Sturtevant 1964). //-->. "Calusa". Around 1983, Donald found remains (ancient pottery and burial mounds) of Calusa Indians on some of his property, Josslyn Island. Dominican missionaries reached the Calusa domain in 1549 but withdrew because of the hostility of the tribe. Warriors killed all the adult men. ed. A Calusa alligator head carved out of wood, excavated at Key Marco in 1895, on display at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Man in Peru Caught Out Drinking With an 800-year-old Mummy! Calusa territory reached from Charlotte Harbor to Cape Sable, all of present-day Charlotte, Lee, and Collier counties, and may have included the Florida Keys at times. They established a complex, centralized government, constructed a canal system, the beginnings of organized religion, and the creating of many art forms. The Calusa used the canals to travel by canoe from their villages and ceremonial centers to coastal trading posts. 5,8,4) traveled this year, in an unprecedented loan of the Key Marco material, to the National Gallery of Art where they were exhibited as part of the Columbian Quincentenary exhibition, Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration. These figureheads will be on display in Philadelphia through 1992 in the Main Entrance of The University Museum. "Florida Indians of Past and Present", in Carson, Ruby Leach and, Goggin, John M., and William C. Sturtevant. The first phase of work included the creation of a detailed topographic map of the island using LiDAR, which gave archaeologists information about its structures and geography. What language did the Calusa speak? Fort San Anton de Carlos is the first example of the use of tabby in North America. All his subjects had to obey his commands. 4-8). This change may have resulted from the people's migration from the interior to the coastal region, or may reflect trade and cultural influences. 8, 9). Before the arrival of Europeans in the Americas, Indigenous peoples who lived in the same region developed similar cultural traits based on their shared natural environment. Those excavations revealed rarely preserved objects of wood, such as masks, figureheads, bowls, and tools, which survived because of the wet environment. Would you like to help support our organization's work with endangered American Indian languages? It was during this phase of research that the team located and documented the massive kings house, showing it was indeed every bit as impressive as Spanish accounts, which claimed it was large enough to accommodate some 2,000 people. 2). Illustrated here, the deer, pelican, wolf, alligator, and sea turtle reveal extraordinary realism, delicacy, and gracefulness of formartistic qualities characteristic of Mississippian Period and earlier ceramic, stone, and wood sculpture excavated in the area and at sites further north (Figs. Shells and clay were used by the Calusa to create the foundation of their cities. The National Geographic has reported that archaeologists have discovered an ancient Native American kings house in Florida. Philadelphia, PA 19104 Little is known about Calusa religion. Office: Old St. Luke's Hospital. Despite having no real agriculture, they developed a dense, sedentary, complex society, with all the good & bad that entails. Different tribes and regions had their own games and traditions. A diorama of a Calusa chief in the Florida Museum of Natural History. For more than 200 years, South Florida's Indians resisted Spanish domination. The immensity of the kings house, as well as the huge shell mounds and the canals required large amounts of labor and mechanisms to mobilize and to organize that labor that he thinks are indicative of a lower class that worked at the behest of the Calusas elites. Fowler Williams, .Lucy"The Calusa Indians: Maritime Peoples of Florida in the Age of Columbus" Expedition Magazine 33.2 (1991): n. pag. Photo source: Moving to Tampa, Florida Center for Instructional Technology, College of Education, University of South Florida, 2002. Calusa Protective Spell-Tampa This piece of folklore came from my co-worker, who grew up in Tampa, Florida. Ancient Chinese Earthquake Detector Invented 2,000 Years Ago Really Worked! These deposits were carefully water-screened using a series of nested screens in order to capture even the finest organic materials. Diseases would ravage their population and force . Tabby, also called tabbi or tapia, is made by burning shells to create lime, which is then mixed with sand, ash, water and broken shells. It is why we were ashamed of Bernie Madoff. This article is good but it does not provide any data related to the status of the Calusa people at the first arrival of Spaniards in 1513 leaded by Juan Ponce de Leon, its "discoverer". Along the southwest Gulf coast lived the Calusa (Caloosa) Indians. This lasted until about 1750, and included the historic Calusa people. The chief's house was described as having two big windows, suggesting that it had walls. He struck an uneasy peace with their leader Caluus, or Carlos. They were supported by the labor of the majority of the Calusa. As for the southern region, my focus was on the Calusa Indians from the south-western Florida peninsula area. They also cored sediments on and off the island to help describe and date environmental changes during the sites occupation. The Tequesta (tuh-KES-tuh) were a small, peaceful, Native American tribe. This article first appeared in the magazines fall 2020 issue. While thousands of Calusa people were enslaved, about 270 people, including Calusa nobles, escaped to the Keys where, after the last raid by the Creeks on May 17, 1760, the surviving 60-70. These massive, rectangular structures built of shell and sediment enclose large areas on both sides of the mouth of Mound Keys great canal, a marine highway nearly 2,000 feet long and about 100 feet wide that bisects the island. By the early 1600s the Calusa returned to Mound Key and reestablished their capital. On Key Marco, among numerous mounds and ridges of earth and shell, he discovered a courtyard submerged in mud and bound by walls of conch shells. The Calusa were descended from people who had lived in the area for at least 1,000 years prior to European contact, and possibly for much longer than that. They were a very innovative and prosperous tribe, and had a number of traditions that set them apart from other tribes in the area. Historical documents indicate that by the mid-1700s, the dwindling Calusa population had fled to Cuba, or the Florida Keys. There was little change in the pottery tradition after this. For hundreds of years, the Calusa built a society that had its own government, a religion, and adaptation to the environment that is quite impressive. After A.D. 1000, the Calusa began to grow in size and complexity, wielding their military might, trading widely and collecting tribute along those trade routes that extended for hundreds of miles. Was this German silver mine really defended by two Roman forts and a line of "spike defenses? Artist's conception of town chief at the Calusa town of Tampa (present day Pineland) (Art by Merald Clark.) See answer (1) Best Answer. The fishing nets they used to catch food were made from palm tree fibers. The Calusa battle Spain over conversion. The researchers used ground penetrating radar and LiDAR to locate and map the forts structures, which they then partially excavated. Favored sites were likely occupied for multiple generations. Some of these masks had moving parts that used pull strings and hinges so that a person could alter the look of a mask while wearing it. The Calusa Native Americans. Certain ceremonies were performed to seal the alliance (and perhaps also as a display of the might of the Calusa), and was witnessed by over 4000 people. (1964). Tools for fishing were made of shell, wood, and plant materials and included hooks and spears, nets, net floats and sinkers, cord, and anchors (Fig. The Calusa knew of the Spanish before this landing, however, as they had taken in Native American refugees from the Spanish subjugation of Cuba. The men were responsible for work away from the home, like hunting and raiding. Re-entering the area in 1614, Spanish forces attacked the Calusa as part of a war between the Calusa and Spanish-allied tribes around Tampa Bay. The Calusa Indians, a poorly understood group of bygone Native Americans D Donna Jean Calusa Indians European Explorers University Of South Florida Gulf Coast Florida Spirit World Mexica South Florida People & Environments: The Calusa Domain: Calusa beliefs included a trinity of governing spirits. Different tribes had different names for the sport including . [9] There is also evidence that as early as 2,000 years ago, the Calusa cultivated a gourd of the species Cucurbita pepo and the bottle gourd, which were used for net floats and dippers. 10 They believed that humans had three souls, and that souls migrated to animals after death. Most spectacular are 9 carved and painted animal heads, some of which were probably worn as masks or headdresses on ceremonial occasions; others probably functioned as architectural elements. 314 Palmetto Street, Jacksonville 32202. From the time of European contact until their ultimate demise from conflict and illness around 1770, the Calusa successfully resisted, albeit with considerable bloodshed, intermittent efforts by Spanish missionaries to convert them to Christianity. Gainesville: University of Florida Press: Florida Museum of Natural History, 1991. While estimates vary, their population probably numbered between 4,000 and 10,000. Fish bones and scales recovered from one of the watercourts indicate the Calusa were capturing schooling species such as mullet, pinfish and herring. Unlike other Indian tribes, the Calusa did not make many. When the chief formally received Menndez in his house, the chief sat on a raised seat surrounded by 500 of his principal men, while his sister-wife sat on another raised seat surrounded by 500 women. The Calusa are said to have been a socially complex and politically powerful tribe, and most of southern Florida was controlled by them. In 1711, the Spanish helped evacuate 270 Indians, including many Calusa, from the Florida Keys to Cuba (where almost 200 soon died). Circumstantial evidence, primarily from Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda, suggests that all of the peoples of southern Florida and the Tampa Bay area, including the Tequesta, Mayaimi, and Tocobaga, as well as the Calusa, spoke dialects of a common language. Widmer cites George Murdock's estimate that only some 20 percent of the Calusa diet consisted of wild plants that they gathered. The Calusa also used spears, hooks, and throat gorges to catch fish. Soon after the discoveries, Donald funded archaeological mapping of . The CalusaPeople of the Estuary. The heir of the chief wore gold in an ornament on his forehead and beads on his legs. Unlike most Florida Indian tribes . Since it seems to be working, many people still believe in the legend. Judging from the email I get, there are a lot of people out there trying to learn about traditional Native American religion and spirituality these days. Franciscan friar Fray Lopez, director of the unsuccessful 1697 mission attempt, described the Calusa temples as very tall and wide, with a mound in the middle and a structure on the mound enclosed with reed mats and containing benches around the walls. Schell, Rolfe F. 1,000 years on Mound Key; the story of the Caloosa Indians on . Prior surface surveys had revealed Spanish ceramics, beads and other artifacts, but the location of the fort hadnt been determined. The University Museum has an exceptional collection of artifacts from the Calusa site at Key Marco, Florida. By the early 19th century, Anglo-Americans in the area used the term Calusa for the people. As noted in an early 1566 acecount, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, a Jesuit missionary in charge of an early and unsuccessful attempt to convert the tribe to Christianity, was welcomed by the principal leader of the Callus with a large meal consisting only of many kinds of boiled, roasted, and raw fish (Goggin and Sturtevant 1964). Could we find unequivocal architectural evidence that Mound Key was the Calusa capital town, as had long been suggested? The Calusa also believed that three supernatural beings ruled the universe. ARTIFACTS & OBJECTS Racoon tail Fish bladder ear decorations Body tattoos Wood spear with bone tip Shell bead necklace Shell pendant Shell bead bracelet Bald Eagle Are the Misty Peaks of the Azores Remnants of the Legendary Atlantis? At the time of European contact in the 16th and 17th centuries, the historic Calusa were the people of the Caloosahatchee culture. Because of their reliance on shellfish, they accumulated large shell middens during this period. [7] The contemporary archeologists MacMahon and Marquardt suggest this statement may have been a misunderstanding of a requirement to marry a "clan-sister". They formerly held the southwest coast from about Tampa Bay to Cape Sable and Cape Florida, together with all the outlying keys, and extending inland to Lake Okeechobee. Chumash Tribe Facts: The Chumash Name Rituals were believed to link the Calusa to their spirit world (Art by Merald Clark.) 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